Full transcript of “Nothing Headphone (1) - Looks Can Be Deceiving…”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:01 The company Nothing just dropped these, their new headphone one, and it comes in two colors. They have a black one as well as my favorite color, a white one. Now, as you would expect from the company, these are extremely unique looking. There's nothing else on the market that looks quite like them. And when I got these in, I opened them up and as I was holding them in my hands, checking them out, I liked how different and just how interesting they were until I put them on because these do not look the way that I thought they would. They look really cool in photos and pictures when they're just still on a table not doing anything. But when they're on your head, they I think they look kind of silly. Now, aesthetics aside, I think these are the best $300 headphones you can get on the market. Like the pair of
0:46 wireless A&C headphones. Uh, but let's get into it. So, the build quality is way better than I thought it would be for a pair of $300 headphones. The ear cups are aluminum. Like the base part of it is this aluminum thing. And then on top you have the polycarbonate see-through section for that classic see-through or transparent nothing look. Then you have the hinge and the metal arm that comes off of that hinge. This locks out really nicely. Like when it hits the end, there's no play. There's just no wiggle as it goes to it. And when you open it up on the inside, you can see that the hinge is metal and there's a good amount of slack on that cable even when it's fully extended, which is nice to see. The plastic component on the ear cup, I do feel like this can get scuffed up over time because this is plastic and plastic loves to scratch. But they do include a
1:31 case. Uh both the black and white headphones have the same case. It's like this black polyester wool looking thing. Uh and you pop it open. Headphones go in like so. And they also include two cables. There's a white USBC cable as well as a white 3.5 mm cable. Now, some notes on comfort. These are not super lightweight headphones. There's a lot of metal in this thing. When you have metal ear cups and metal hinges, it definitely adds some weight. And for my head shape, I find these reasonably comfortable. I put them at like a 7.5. It's mostly the clamp force that I don't like. It's a little bit tight for me. Uh, and I find that a lot of headphones feel this way for myself. Uh the headband I think is a little bit like the padding I think is a
2:17 little bit thinner that I'd like or they could just make like the headband a little bit wider. Maybe that would have fixed it. The ear pads. These are very comfortable. They're like a good size. They seal well and they're super soft. Now the company says they are replaceable down the line. Like you can just pop these off apparently. I tried to wiggle them off. Couldn't seem to, but supposedly you can replace them if you need to down the line. Now the controls on these are really nice. For one, they're just super easy to identify. Like you can pick these up in the dark and you'll just know exactly which one the right one is because that's the one that has the controls, which is awesome. You just like put them on, you know it's there. Now, controlling it is also very simple. I think this is like something that the whole headphone industry has warped their brains about just gestures and touch controls. Those suck compared to
3:03 physical tactile controls. Like I love the way this stuff is. So you have a roller, which is, you know, volume adjustment. You can tap it to start, stop. You can long hold it to adjust like the modes for like transparency mode or noise cancellation. This thing down here, they call it the paddle for just track. You want to select a track forward, backward, super simple. And then there's one button up here. This is for uh just software and shortcuts. But these two controls back here are just awesome. Straight up awesome. I love them. The moment I picked these things out of the box, I'm like, this is the way that headphones should be. The controls are so good. When it comes to sound, the reality is that wireless Anie headphones have a very low bar. Even if you take the best ones that are available on the market, the Sony XM6, and you measure these, these aren't amazing when it comes to sound quality.
3:48 These sound really good considering the price point. These are $299. And if these were like a nine, let's say, XM6s, I'd give these like a seven and a half, maybe even an eight, which is amazing again considering the price point. If I had to describe the sound, these have like they're heavier in the midbase. That's the that's the main descriptor. I think they do it because this is a product that will be available in stores. You're you're going to be able to go into like Best Buy and retail shops and check them out, listen to them, and I think they cranked that midbase so that it just sounds a little bit more impressive when you're demoing them in stores. I think it's perfectly fine, and I think it's done intentionally. Now, I don't have the tools to measure these properly. In order to do good headphone measurements, you need a hat like a head and torso simulator. I only have tools to measure
4:34 earbuds and speakers properly. But just out of curiosity, I threw them in just to see how they'd measure with the HD6x's as a reference point. I don't know if I'd really call these measurements because the tools I have were so crude, but I just wanted to see. The app does have an eightband EQ, so if you're sweaty, you can tweak it to get a more balanced sound profile. But out of the box, I think these are the best sounding $300 wireless A&C headphones you can get. They're just really nice sounding even if you don't touch them at all. Now, the tuning of the audio on these headphones were done in collaboration with KE. And KEF is one of few speaker companies that tune their speakers and engineer their audio around the concept of blind listening tests. And because of that, they are very well respected in the audio file community. So, I would hope that if that's how they tune their speakers, they've brought
5:20 that same methodology to these headphones. Maybe that's why they sound so good. But they've done a fantastic job with the DSP on these. The microphones on the headphone ones sound decent. When I compare them to older generation headphones like the Sony XM 4s or the Bose QC35s, the new Nothing One headphones sound a little better to me. Not by a lot, but I feel like it's there. But compared to the latest Sony XM 6 or Apple AirPods Max, XM 6s sound a little cleaner to me. And the mic on the AirPods Max sounds the best to me, but none of these sound particularly good. The active noise cancellation is really good on these. They're more powerful than what you hear on the Sony XM4s. Uh they're not as strong as what you got on the new XM6s and the AirPod Maxes, but for the price point, I think they're really good. And you have control of it in software. You can control like the strength of the ANC. The other thing
6:07 that's really good on these, like surprisingly good, is the transparency mode. So, typically in that $3 to $400 range, that's where a lot of devices suck, but these sound awesome. The transparency mode is on, the voice pass through is just fantastic. Uh, the other thing, battery life. The company claims 80 hours with ANC off and 35 hours with it on. Now, I've only had them for a few days. I haven't been able to do rigorous testing, but they seem to last very long. All right, I want to talk about aesthetics. So, obviously, aesthetics are a very subjective thing, right? Everyone's going to have a different taste of what they like and don't like, but this is like a a small spread of wireless A&C headphones. And these devices here all have a similar vibe in terms of like the design aesthetic being visually neutral. These are designed so
6:54 that when you have these things on, they don't look like they may have like a memorable or iconic shape to them, but they're a visually cohesive device in the sense that everything on here has this unified aesthetic. It's not supposed to stand out. It's supposed to be this like amorphous blob of an object. It's a headphone. It's not designed to be a visually obtrusive object. Okay. The nothing headphone one is not that. This is built quite different. When you look at this, this product has a visual design language that it's not cohesive. There's like a square or like a rounded rectangle over here and then on top of that is a uh like an
7:41 oval-shaped object. And like the the materials are different. There's like a clear plastic here and then, you know, metal and then plastic. There's just a lot of different materials and a lot of contrasting shapes and looks and I it's done with purpose. Obviously, nothing wanted to create something that was also visually iconic, but this looks more like a collection of different parts put together. It makes it more visually interesting, like much more interesting to look at than something like the Sony XM6's, right? By comparison, this is just like a gray blob. Uh, but all these little design elements, all these visual details that you see, I think they look really cool when you're looking at pictures up close, but they look completely different when you're wearing it on your head. And I think for most people, they would just prefer a more visually neutral, plain set of headphones. Now, the crazy thing is I
8:27 think nothing the company I think they know this because if you look at all their press material like the review guide, all the pictures they sent for this launch, all of the photos are just pictures of the little details, up close photos of people holding this thing, but there were no photos that showcase what these headphones actually looked like when you're wearing them. Like they did have a guy wearing them, but his hands were covering them. Like, wouldn't you want to show that like every other headphone company does? But I think nothing just knows that this device looks so much better sitting in a table like for a product shot up close than it does worn on head. And that's just the nature of a design like this. It's super cool to look at. But if you're interested in them, definitely check it out and see in stores like what you actually look like before you commit to them. But audio-wise, awesome. Like
9:13 truly awesome for a $300 pair of wireless A&C headphones. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.
